Medicine: In an Iron Lung

It had been a wonderful, strenuous summer, and 13-year-old Birdsall
Sweet was just going into the last half of the eighth grade in Beacon,
N.Y. But in September, husky, athletic Birdsall suddenly fell ill.
After five days he was admitted to a hospital in Poughkeepsie. Like
many another youngster in the epidemic year of 1931, Birdsall Sweet had
polio.

His arms and legs were already paralyzed. Before the day was out, his
breathing muscles gave out, he got blue in the face, and had to be put
in an iron lung. Birdsall Sweet was never to escape entirely from his
prison as...